HEAD COACH PETE CARROLL
Opening statement:
"Well, this was an unusual game. So many things happened in this game that [we] just hurt ourselves. Even the coach got hurt in this one. We made mistakes, errors, the big plays, the returns. The mistake in the kicking game that gives them a chance for another touchdown, it's like a turnover. We just had a really hard time getting out of our own way. Sometimes the game goes like that, and you just can't get out of your own way, you make the mistakes that caused the problems, and you try to recover. We just didn't get it done. I had a particularly bad day. There were too many chances I had to make some things happen, and I tried too hard at times. And, I kind of got in the flow of it, and it was really disappointing, just disappointing across the board. They played really good. They played really hard, and tough. The running back was fantastic. It was a big factor in the game, we didn't tackle very well. It just led to a really hard game, and we were just playing behind the whole time. I thought right at the end of the half, I didn't do that well, and I wished we would have kicked the ball and made them go the long way, and not give them a chance to score, which they did. So, they took advantage of the opportunities in a really winning way. Sean's guys played really good to get that done. There were just so many ways in this game for it to be different, it's just unfortunate. It's very frustrating. But, this is one game. Maybe this is the one game that we learn from and we grow from and we can put this one behind us, and we can turn things in the right direction, and not let this happen. It's particularly hard to do this in front of our own fans, at home."
*On what he told Chris Carson : *
"To get ready to get back into the game and just do right. He's had three remarkable, remarkable punches that have knocked the ball out. He was covering it up, and he knew, he was conscious, it was right in the right place, and it happened again. So, we needed to get him out of there some, just give him some time to whatever, separate from it, and then put him back in, let him play some, and just work our way back out of it. He's been a marvelous player on this team, and he has to fix this. I can't fix it for him, but we'll help him, and count on him to come back and play good football for us."
On what happened to his nose:
"It would have been a really good story that I had head-butted Bobby in the pregame, getting fired up in the locker room, but I heard that they captured it on film. I got smacked in the nose with the football. The last play of warmups. I didn't see it coming."
On whether his nose is broken:
"It's been broken many times."
On Duane Brown:
"He could have gone back in. He had a little upper arm strain, and we have to figure out what that is. That's as far as we know right now, it's very early."
On the challenge on fourth down late in the game:
"Just looking for a hook. We thought we saw a little hook in there on the route that might warrant them seeing something. Taking a shot."
On what he can challenge on that play:
"No, I was advised, and we've been told, that they're going to go to the OPI/DPI discussion. I think Tyler got grabbed over there, but it wasn't--- The official that I talked to saw that, and knew that that was away from the play and it wasn't going to get called. They really don't go into reviewing that. It's interesting that they say that they say they're going to review the whole entire play, but they're only looking at OPI/DPI as far as I understand it."
On not calling time outs at the end of the first half:
"It's just, we were on the wrong side of the field and all of a sudden the big play hits, and we pop. We had already been kind of stung by the sequence before, and it's a long ways home, but Russ came up with some magic and made a great play with DK. If we knew that was going to happen, I would have called time out earlier. But, it didn't work. That was just kind of how this thing went. It was one of those days."
On the punt return touchdown:
"I think we had four or five guys unblocked, and we have to make the tackle. Tackling showed up, in that play for sure, and then vs. Kamara all day long. He's a really good ball player. It's the first time I've really seen him like this, and it was really impressive."
On getting just two hits on Bridgewater:
"The ball came out pretty quick. They didn't hit us, we didn't hit them today. I don't know why that would go like that. We expected to get more pressure. It didn't seem like they were on offense very much in this game. They didn't have to be. We did OK on third down, and they didn't run the ball great, scheme-wise and all that. But, we didn't get to him."
On which mistakes are the most fixable:
"There is all kinds of stuff. Not lining up on top of the center on the field goal. That's just the rules. I don't know how we made that error. I've never seen us ever do that. I don't know why that happened; we'll find out. I could have changed the situation on fourth down some. I could have kicked the ball and done a couple more conservative things that I like to do often, but I felt pretty good about how we were playing D. I tried too hard. It was one of those deals. We can easily fix those. There was a bunch of stuff there. Good question."
On deciding to go deep on the last fourth-and-1 play:
"We got checked out of the play that we were running. They had everybody on the line of scrimmage and it's a check. We tried to take advantage and score a touchdown right there. It was a very aggressive thought in how we do it, but we have that in our ability to do that and Russ went for it."
On Russell Wilson's play:
"I thought he was exceptional. I think there were a few low balls that he threw, but other than that, he was spectacular all day long. Timing, moving in the pocket. His scrambling was excellent today, he took full advantage of movement and getting outside. The guys did a great job to adjust to him. We have that part of our game together, that was very sharp today. And he ran at selective times well again, as he did last week. He's really playing great ball right now."
On the play of the offensive line:
"We protected the best we have. I didn't think we were out of the running game at all, we were just way behind. In the middle of the third quarter, we were in two-minute stuff. You can't tell about the running game so much. We rushed for 90 yards in the first half, so that's a pretty good showing. "
On the fourth-and-1 from their 41 early in the game, would you do the same thing:
"Generally, we count on Michael to put the ball inside the 10 yard line. That's why I didn't like the way it went today. If I stick to my guns on that, and we kick it deep, we'll see what happens, and I would rather play it that way. You get choices in this game, and sometimes you go for it and sometimes you don't."
On whether they should have gone for two:
"We didn't do that right, either. We didn't do that right. "
On whether there was a miscue between Wilson and Turner on the fourth-hand-1 in the fourth quarter:
"I have to check into that one. I'm not sure about that one, sorry."
On whether he has ever had a penalty similar to Tedric Thompson coming on to the field:
"Yeah, we've celebrated too much before. It was significant. He was trying to be part of the game at that time. We still had a first down, we had the ball on the 50 and all that. It could have been nice. We just have to do a better job of that. Nobody gets to go on the field. Not even the coach."
On Rashaad Penny:
"He ran well in pregame, so he'll have a chance by Thursday, probably, to show us how he's doing. We won't rush it along."
On the play of the defensive:
"We're not getting the ball as much as we need to. That's always tell-tale, particularly when we play at home. We hawk the ball pretty good here. Usually, that has to do with effective pass rush. We usually play off of that, but there are other ways, too. There were some chances in the first half, the ball was bouncing around a little bit. Until we're getting the football, we're not going to be playing the way we want to play. Statistically, it wasn't bad. Those guys are playing the run pretty well, and they're doing a lot of good things in general. We have to put it all together."
On his first look at Ziggy Ansah:
"I can't tell you, I didn't see him enough. I didn't get a good look at him."
On whether Ansah's 17 snaps were the plan:
"Around 20, that was what we were thinking."
On his concern about Carson's confidence:
"I just want to get him back out there and get going, so he can show himself that he can take care of this. He's a great competitive kind. He cares. He wants to. He did everything during the week to do a great job throughout the week, and he'll need to do that all again. I'm going to help him believe in himself, because he's a fantastic competitor and ball player. He deserves that support."
On the play off Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright:
"They continue to be a huge factor for us, and playing great football. They made a lot of key stops, again. It's a good duo, and Mike's adding to it. I like the way those guys are playing in general. I like what we're able to do with those guys on the field. You can see the numbers aren't going anywhere at all against us, so we have to see if we can keep that going in our favor."
On the play of Tyler Lockett:
"He's a fantastic player. He's just such a good player. You see him so many times make exactly the right choice and the right decision for the opportunity that he has. He's just so adept. He and Russ are just on it. It's not unfamiliar territory for us. We expected this to be like this. We could still mix it around a bit better. We're going to wear him out, if we're not careful."
QB RUSSELL WILSON
On how frustrating the game was for him:
"Obviously, this is an unfortunate game. Coming home and excited to play at home, and obviously, we didn't play our best football. We gave them a touchdown with the punt return, and they had a fumble recovery for a touchdown.
We had some other miscues too. We've just got to play smarter. We just have to play sharper. We've got to be cleaner. We're a little young, so we've got to make sure that what it takes to win in this league is detail, detail. Little things. All those little things matter. We have a great football team and we can be great. To play a championship caliber team, the Saints, even if they didn't have Drew [Brees], they had all the other players. They got [Alvin] Kamara. You saw, he's a playmaker. Michael Thomas, playmaker. Teddy [Bridgewater] played great today. Their defense did some good stuff too. I think about, when you're going into a game like that, you've got to play clean football. That's the good thing. The good thing is we can do that. We have done that before. We're usually pretty known for that in terms of being on our stuff and trying to be great in situations and stuff like that. We've just got to be a little tighter. "
On what he said to Chris Carson:
"I just told him I still believe in him. He's one of the best running backs in the league. Plays happen. There's never been a player who's never fumbled. That's just reality. I think more than anything else, we just got to continue to believe in him. He's got to continue to believe in himself, which he will. We're all in this together. I was telling the guys in the locker room, the reality of this game, which is the game we all love, is that you win together, and you lose together. We can go as far as we want together as well. That's our focus moving forward. Sometimes, there hasn't been too many teams that go undefeated who win the whole thing. We've just got to focus on winning the next game. Going on the road, I think we go to Arizona, right? We're going on the road to Arizona and that's going to be a tough environment as always. Division game. That always seems to come down to the wire it feels like. We've got to get prepared. In those coming down to the wire type games, that's where we got to play really sharp, really clean, and really focused."
On if he thought about calling a time out at the end of the first half on the play to Will Dissly:
"Yeah, I think that we could've done that. We tried to make another play real quick and then use him. We've got to review that stuff. I've got to check it out before I see it all. "
On what he saw from the fourth down play with Malik Turner:
"Yeah, we tried to make the play. They had everybody up. We've done that a lot in the past. We're usually pretty good at that. We didn't hit it, unfortunately. There were some other plays in there that we could've made. I think the reality is that we still played good football I think in the sense of offensively and trying to do some things. We scored some points. We made some plays. They're a great defense. They've been able to do a lot of things throughout the years and stuff like that. For us today, there was probably six, seven, eight plays in there that we wish we could've done better. "
WR TYLER LOCKETT
On the biggest takeaway from this game:
"I think the biggest takeaway is we just can't shoot ourselves in the foot. We spotted them 13 points with the punt return that they ended up scoring on and then the fumble they ended up scoring on. You take that away, it's a whole different ball game. For us, we just have to eliminate the penalties, especially on first down. It shoots us in the foot. It's hard to do great on first and 25 or first and 20. The other thing is, you have to credit that punter. He did a great job of putting us in tough field position. There were times when we thought we were going to get it on the 20 or 25 [yard line] and he would have a great punt that went to the two yard line or it went to the six yard line and it changed field position for them. I think that was big in the game as well."
On if the Saints good punts changed his decisions late in the game to try and get some of those yards back:
"No. If he kicked those same balls, I would still do the same thing. I understand when I need to let it go based off of where it's going to hit. It just had a weird bounce and it ended up working out in their favor. But a lot of other times, it's going to work out in our favor. It was just that game where everything was going their way."
On if he can celebrate a game where he had a career-high in receiving yards:
"I didn't really look. But for me, it's just continuing to try to be the best that I can be. There were a lot of things that I did out there that I left on the field that I want to continue to be able to work on and continue to expand my game [and] understanding what kind of role I can be and what I can have on this team and how I can help them win. That's exactly what I'm going to focus on is just going to work. Not worrying about the results, but just focusing on going to work and playing for God."
On what the official said to him on the fourth down play where he might have been interfered with:
"He was saying that when the ball was up in the air, it wasn't going to me and the eyes are off of me. It goes to where the ball is going and the ball had already left his hand. That's pretty much what he said. At the end of the day, it's their job to be able to call it and he didn't see enough evidence there so you have to respect that and that's exactly what I said. [I said] we respected the call and we went to the next possession."
LB BOBBY WAGNER
On what makes Alvin Kamara so slippery:
"He just got great, great balance. You talk about it a lot, but we finally got to see it in person. You definitely have got to run your feet on him. He does a great job of keeping his balance, keeping his feet going. They did a great job."
On how the short passing game put strain on the defense:
We just had to rely on tackling, try to keep everything in front of us. We knew they were going to go deep, so we tried to keep everything in front. We've just got to do a better job of tackling. We just had critical penalties and critical mistakes in certain moments that cost us whether it was a penalty, missed tackle, flag. It was always something at a critical moment that didn't allow us to turn it around.
On how this game becomes a teaching moment going forward:
"You just have to understand that you have to play your best football no matter who's out there on the field. If you don't come out here ready to play, they'll beat you. It doesn't matter who we play, doesn't matter if we're playing a team that's 15-0, or a team that's 1-15, you have to bring your best every single time."
On what it takes to perform differently during those critical mistakes:
"We just have to have awareness. The penalty where we got off on third down and then we lined up over the center, we passed a mental mistake. Those types of penalties can't happen. We just have to make our tackles for those plays."
On how strange of a game it was for him when looking at the overall stats:
"It was a little weird, but you understand what it is. You allow a return and you let a fumble go to a touchdown, that puts you behind the sticks and we had to find a way to be better and we need to create more turnovers. We didn't do that. We got one. We need more than one. "
On if he saw what he expected to see from Teddy Bridgewater:
"We felt like they did what we thought they were going to do. We didn't think they were going to air it out like [Drew] Brees does, but Teddy is a good quarterback and we knew he was going to be able to manage the game and use his legs when he needed to and dump it down to [Alvin] Kamara and all his weapons. He has a lot of weapons. Michael Thomas and Kamara, those guys are really good."
On seeing how tough Alvin Kamara was to bring down:
"He's a good player, definitely, He's got my respect for sure. He's definitely one of the best in the game. Watching his balance and watching the way he hits holds. We hit him a couple times and he came back for more. As a linebacker, I respect him for sure."
On if he thinks they took it for granted that Drew Brees wasn't going to play:
"I would like to say that we respect it. We've been in situations where the quarterback wasn't going to play. I would like to say that we didn't take Teddy lightly. I feel like we had a lot of respect for Teddy. We've played him before in Minnesota. We've got a lot of respect for him. We've got a lot of respect for Kamara, Mike Thomas, those guys. I would like to say that we didn't let that respect fall because Brees wasn't playing. "
RB CHRIS CARSON
On what he needs to do to hold on to the ball:
"I just need to keep my elbow tucked, that's it."
On attributing his fumbles to the weather:
"That's football. I just need to protect the ball, that's it."
On if he knew the ball came out before his knee was down:
"No I didn't know. But it was."
On how he regroups after today:
"It's one play. It's a long game so you have to have a short-term memory and keep going."
On why it was a challenge to get some push up front with the offensive line:
"They just have a great defense playing out there. It's just something where we need to regroup and get better."
On how he works on cleaning up his fumbles:
"I just have to keep trying to get better. The defense is going to try and go after the ball so I have to be aware of that."
On if defenses try to get fumbles with him carrying the ball because he's lost some already:
"If it happens, it happens. You can't control any of that. If you see somebody fumble, of course they're going to try and go after that."
On what RBs Coach Chad Morton and Head Coach Pete Carroll said to him after the game:
"Nothing. Just that I'm a great runner and I need to learn from it and move forward."
On if he needed to change his cleats during the game:
"Yeah I changed them."
On if it felt like the team was going to come back in the second half:
"That's just [Russell Wilson]. [He makes] spectacular plays all the time so once we found out that we were down, we took it as we just need to get the ball in Russell's hands and anything is possible."
WR JARON BROWN
On what the message is to the younger guys after a loss like this:
"I mean, something Tyler [Lockett] said to me right after is you have 24 hours to correct it, you look at the film, and you've got to move on. Really, that's the reality of it. We're going to get it corrected because we have Arizona next week. We got to get back. Got to be ready to get on there on the road next week and get it done again. Got 24 hours to look at the film, recognize what went wrong, practice. It's a long season. That's my message."
On what his message is to Chris Carson after having a tough couple games:
"We take pride in that, taking care of the ball. I'm sure. He did an excellent job throughout the week preparing. Really, I can't really put that solely on him. It was a sloppy game. At the end of the day, I know for sure that he definitely prepares and takes care of the ball."
C JUSTIN BRITT
On what the message is to the younger guys after a loss like this:
"There was a reason it just wasn't clicking. Which is weird because coming off last year, we're so used to just being able to run the ball well. Especially in short yardage, we've got to do better. I can just keep going and going. We just got to get back to practice and see what we can be better at and just do it. Come out next week ready to fight. I know, if we learned anything from this game is that we've got some dogs on offense and that we're going to fight until the last whistle. I mean, we scored on the last play. There's no stopping us. It's just one loss and it's a long season. It won't define us."
On why things weren't clicking early offensively:
"I don't know, maybe the rain. I think they had a really good game plan and they played their butts off. I feel like offensively, we battled, and we played tough. We knew it wasn't going to be an easy win. They're a championship contending team and I think their offense did what they needed to do and we kind of gave them some stuff early and we've got to quit doing that. We've got to come out and start faster next week. We've got to start getting that going. We can't keep starting slow."
T DUANE BROWN
On if slow starts on offense are recipes for disasters:
"You put yourself in a tough position. Like I said, that's a very, very, good football team in all facets. So, you have to be sharp. If you start slow and they don't, you're in an uphill battle, and we battled until the end. We came back but it was just too much to try to make up."
On if it's frustrating to make mental mistakes for the third straight week:
"Absolutely, absolutely. Because, we know we're a better football team than that. We've got great players, and we've got smart players but, - starting the game with a penalty and a three and out, a punt return for a touchdown – that's not how you want to start a game, especially at home."
CB SHAQUILL GRIFFIN
On why it was tough to stop Alvin Kamara:
"He's got balance. That's something that we spoke about all week and he showed that. I don't want to take nothing from him, he played awesome today, but that's on us. We had missed tackles and we knew from the jump that he was going to be a tough guy to tackle and we kind of let things get away from us."
On what the conversation was like between the defense:
"We're not going to sit here and put our heads down. We've got a long journey, a long season and it's something that we're going to bounce back from. We've got 24 hours to think about life and what happened today. We're going to watch the film and understand what we did wrong, learn from it and move on."
On what the biggest problem was today:
"The biggest problem today was execution by us. We just needed to limit the mistakes between not lining up the correct way, losing the ball, missing tackles. It's easy, it's easy and we can fix it. That's something that we're going to focus on."
On how they'll be able to fix the small mistakes:
"All the little things, we just go through walk-throughs and you just have to take that part and every part of practice seriously. I feel like that's the main thing. That's the main thing we're going to focus on. We're going to focus on being more mentally tough and seeing that the things that we do, every little thing matters."
On why tackling was more of an issue today with Alvin Kamara:
"We kind of came into the week knowing that he was a guy with great balance and we were going to test that fact. We came in and he showed that. I don't want to take anything away from Kamara. He's a heck of a player and he showed that today. That's on us. We just need to make sure that we take him all the way down to the ground and every else needs to pursue just in case he does slip out. That's totally on us but that's something easy to fix."
RB C.J. PROSISE
On being able to come out and play hard after hearing criticism of him being injury prone:
"I don't really listen to the injury stuff because I know what this is. I know the position I play. I know that it's a high chance of injury. I don't let that bother me. I don't let that bring me down. I just keep working and keep playing. I love playing this game and it's my favorite thing to do. Whenever I get a chance to, I'm just excited and happy to be out there."
On being able to help the offensive line:
"I'm just trying to help the team win. That's all it comes down to. We're going to get the job done, we just had a tough one. We'll come back next week."
DE QUINTON JEFFERSON
On defending the Saints passing offense:
"You just have to put your hands up and try to bat it. But, it is what it is. Like I said, we've just got to tackle. That was the biggest thing too, catch the ball and tackle. We've got to get guys down, make good tackles on our feet. That's the biggest thing."
On trying to contain Alvin Kamara:
"Going against a lot of guys, I feel like he's definitely, probably the best. Especially keeping his feet moving. He runs hard as hell, he doesn't want to go down, and with him you've got to lay heavy and run your feet. Sometimes we were shoulder tackling, arm tackling, that's not going to cut it. He's one of the best backs in the league, and he's not going to go down with an arm tackle."
On how quick they need to regroup to bounce back for the game next week:
"Quickly. It's a long season. We lost but, we got about 13 more weeks to make to make up for it. So, quite a bit of game so, I'm glad we got it out the way now, and to never let it happen again."
G D.J. FLUKER
On if it was difficult to get back on track after the early mistakes:
"It's a football game, it's tough. It's the NFL, guys can play every week. That's what we have to do. We have to prepare better but that doesn't define us. We came back and showed that we could come back. If we had maybe five more minutes, we could've come back and won. The thing is, you just need to stay positive. We can learn from this game, watch the film on Monday and go from there."
On what the pass protection was like today:
"We did a better job than last week. That defined us. Everyone was talking about we gave up a sack there, a sack there, but we came and got better. We worked on it. We prepared better. You're always going to have bumps in the road and this game proved that. We're going to run the ball. We know the team is going to prepare for us every single week because they know we're big guys and we're going to move guys out of the way. That's our job, we get paid to do that."
On where the preparation for next week starts:
First off, we need to learn from our mistakes on Monday. Learn from that, go home and watch film. Learn from it, take notes from it and just become better. We need to become better as ballplayers and better as men. That's going to take preparation for us.
